


Panic

by halfd3af



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety, Blood, Existentialism, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mentions of Death, this is gonna be Angsty y’all lmao, until it’s not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23138308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfd3af/pseuds/halfd3af
Summary: The ARK has two new passengers after finally launching from the Omega Space Gun: how will they fit in among the residents that have been living their lives already for the past few months, since it was apparently running while being safeguarded by Sarah?
Comments: 11
Kudos: 63





	1. Wonderland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name, Panic, comes from the Caravan Palace song, as it’s been intrinsically linked with SOMA in my mind ever since the game came out. I heard the song for the first time right around watching a playthrough of the game right after it’s release.

“I still can’t believe it....” Simon murmurs, as the sail boat carrying him and Catherine cuts through the waves with ease. He had to force his gaze out over the water so he wouldn’t continue staring at Brandon, who was commanding the large sails, oblivious to the memories Simon was internally fighting with. 

The sight of the man’s bloody corpse lying there in the chair was still burned into his mind. He was now standing just a dozen feet away, alive and healthy, a deep tan to the once sallow skin that had hung off his body. 

It was likely from many days out on the surprisingly realistic sea, and Simon was still frozen in shock from all the new stimuli he was experiencing.

They were all relatively familiar sensations that he had had before, whether it was the warmth of sunlight on his pale skin or the smell of salt filling his sinuses. He was no stranger to them, having spent many summer days on the shores of Lake Ontario, but his mind had been deprived of them in the short couple of days spent in bodies that weren’t his at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

He hadn’t able to perceive the pressure and weight of the ocean above him, but he knew it was omnipresent.

He wasn’t aware of the structure gel oiling his every movement through the viscera and mechanical decay that filled Pathos-II, but he knew it was always there. 

His bodies were the furthest from being alive, and now he felt truly human again... somewhat.

He had been a testament to the WAU’s ingenuity in saving what it could of mankind. However, just because he had some level of sanity and mobility compared to the other “mockingbirds” did not mean that he was somehow “lucky” in the grand scheme of things. 

The robot artifices containing what the WAU  thought was truly important in a human, the mind, were constructed without considering the incredible importance of the  _body_. It had no understanding of how much that part plays in the whole picture.

A wave rocked the boat, and he held onto the railing as the ship buckled beneath his feet. “Sorry about that!” Brandon yells through a hearty laugh.

God, everything felt so  _real_ , too real. The artificial vibrancy of the ARK was drowning him substantially more than the depressing Earth he had left behind.

The body he had left behind.

Oh god.

Pushing away that ugly,  horrifying thought into the recesses of his brain, he tried to focus on the present with a sharp inhale of the salty air. Catherine stood to his left, her face much more animated than the imprint on the screens he was used to. 

He didn’t have to rely on just the cadence of her voice to understand her mood now. For the first time, he could get the whole picture.

Her eyes shone with excitement and an eager smile pinched her cheeks as she stared forwards at the approaching city. “So uh, how many people are here?” He forces out, an attempt at discussing what lies ahead for them.

“There should be close to 50, I believe!” She says, and the unwavering joy in her voice was infectious. He WAS excited to meet the others. When they had met Brandon on the shoreline, his awkward welcome was a little off-putting, so he was hoping that his presence would be more accepted by the others.

A pier was now in view, and as Brandon guided the boat into the marina for docking, a crowd of people rushed across the wooden planks when someone yelled out, “He’s back!”.

None of their faces were recognizable, but their voices were. The light-hearted cadence of Peter Strasky wasn’t difficult to tell apart from the crowd, and neither were Alice Koster’s soft tone or the gruff Swedish accent of Ian Pedersen. Interestingly, there was a child clinging to Alice’s side, bobbed black hair framing their small face.

Their chatters of excitement fell quiet when they got a closer look at the two new passengers of the ARK. “Is this even possible?” Strasky murmurs, and there’s an uncomfortable silence after his words dissipate.

But someone is still trying to catch a glimpse of us. As they try to carefully weave their way to the front of the group, the people make way for them wordlessly.

“Who is it? Do we know who they are...” Her confused voice trailing off as she realizes why the crowd had grown silent. I could feel my jaw drop when I finally saw who it was.

Brandon wasn’t being awkward because of me... it was because of... 

It was Catherine. 

ANOTHER Catherine. 

And she was staring straight at us.

She wore a plain dress shirt and pants with a matching decorative vest, so at least she looked physically different than the Catherine by my side.

Simon expected his Catherine to react just as he had to his second copy, with dismay and confusion. But she said nothing, walking up closer to this clone of hers.

After a few moments, both of them staring into the others’ eyes, they did something completely unexpected.

They embraced.

“It’s just like....” The familiar Catherine says, her voice taught with emotion.

“Yeah...” The other says, and the two of them laugh. They LAUGH.

“You’re... not upset?” Simon says, absolutely dumbfounded.

“Well, I expected it. I knew scanning myself in a second time wouldn’t replace my original scan that had already been active inside the ARK before it’s launch” She explains, her pragmatic tone slightly annoying him as she turns to face him.

“Besides... it’s not that strange to me. Having someone nearly identical to me is a familiar feeling after all, as I... I had a twin brother” She carries on, her voice growing soft with a tinge of sadness.

The ARK Catherine smiles. “It’ll be just like old times with Alex” She jokes, and this seems to lift Cath out of her melancholy.

“I didn’t know you had a twin brother-“ Simon starts to say, but he begins to notice that the attention of the crowd has shifted to him.

“And who are you?” Strasky asks, his blue eyes practically glowing in the sunlight as they stared into mine.

“I’m Simon, Simon Jarrett. And before you ask where I’m from, it’s... it’s a long story” He replies nervously, and someone in the crowd catches his eye.

“Well, we have all the time in the world to hear it” The former Theta dispatcher laughs, as an unfamiliar face continues to stare at Simon with open intrigue.

His light brown hair rested neatly on his head, and his deep-set eyes sat above defined cheekbones. “Are you really Simon Jarrett?” The stranger asks, and something about his gentle voice sends a shiver down Simon’s spine.

“Do you know him, Ross?” Strasky asks, and Simon swears he feels his heart launch into his throat.

Ross? THAT Ross? The one who was going to kill him after he lost his arm to the WAU?

“Mr. Jarrett here is from what we call a ‘legacy scan’ in the field of AI technology. I couldn’t be an AI psychologist if I didn’t know who he was. He’s the reason why we were all able to be safely stowed away onto the ARK” Ross elaborates, his silver tongue nothing like the garbled sounds that would emanate from his WAU-resurrected form.

The Englishman steps closer, a little too close for Simon’s tastes. His vision is juxtaposed with flashes of the version of Ross that Simon first knew.

“I just haven’t the faintest idea how he managed to get all the way here, so far away in both time and space from his original life” He continues, inspecting Simon from head to toe.

The scrutiny of his gaze under such proximity was beginning to affect him. His mouth was dry as sand, and when he lifted his hand to nervously scratch the back of his neck, he felt it trembling.

“What happened down at Pathos-II, Simon?” Ross asks, and all Simon can hear is static.

“Simon? Are you alright?” He inquires again more quietly, but Simon can’t see him anymore. His vision is pure black as he feels his body lurch to the ground like heavy cement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Brandon worked at Delta, I can imagine him knowing how to work something as “simple” as a sailboat compared to whatever machinery he dealt with at Pathos.
> 
> I based Ross’ appearance/voice off of the SOMA Safe Mode trailer, since that’s who is narrating it. He’s already super dramatic with his dialogue in game, so of course he’s gonna be super suave in person


	2. Melancolia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! It took me a while to get a clear vision for this chapter lol

Simon’s eyes flicker open to a view of an unfamiliar ceiling.

“How are you feeling?” A woman asks, her voice sounding familiar yet far away and dreamlike. He blinks again, then again, as he struggles to clear away his blurry vision.

Turning his head to the left, he’s able to focus on the shape of a person sitting nearby. “Ashley..?” Simon whispers, his heart fluttering with excitement for a mere second before realizing that it’s Catherine.

“Uh, okay.. I think. Did I pass out?” He replies more audibly, staring at the back of his hands and silently hoping she hadn’t heard him.

“Yeah, but thankfully this isn’t the first time it’s happened on the ARK. Masters says it’s like a reboot, when your scan gets too stressed” She elaborates, her face growing curious at the tailend. 

The name seems familiar to him, and with hazy recollection, he pinpoints it as the name for Theta’s medical doctor.

“Did you get overwhelmed from seeing all those people? I get like that sometimes” Catherine asks sympathetically, though Simon’s stomach sunk as he remembered how that wasn’t exactly the case.

The disorienting and ghastly appearance of Ross’ reanimated blackened flesh had flashed before his eyes. He could recall how the words uttered from the resurrected man’s mouth crackled with static.

“Simon?” She asks again, and he shakes his head. “Yeah, everything’s just... so different” He replies with a nervous chuckle.

“Well, c’mon then. There’s a party waiting for us at the park” Catherine continues, and his attention shifts eagerly. “There’s a park?”.

“Immortalizing the Daan Forest Park in Taipei seemed only natural when I was designing the ARK’s artificial environments” She elaborates, and Simon maneuvers himself off the bed to join her.

The rest of the medical clinic consisted of a few offices and a waiting room, all of which appeared vacant. Following her outside the building, several skyscrapers captured his attention as they walked down the city’s sidewalk.

“What’s in all these buildings?” He asks, trying his best not to trip on his own feet as he gazes upwards.

With a wave of her hand, she responds with, “Laboratories, workrooms, all kinds of stuff. They must have expanded the square footage from my original construction the city”.

As they grew closer to the park, he noticed the sounds of music and lively conversation. Maybe a good old-fashioned party would help him settle in...

An illuminated pavilion shone like a lighthouse next to the nearby pond of dark blue water. The LEDs decorating the wooden beams of the structure were beautiful, even though they were reminiscent of the monster that shadowed him on the CURIE.

Before they could get any closer, Simon tries to make his appearance less unkempt. “How do I look?” He asks Catherine, running a hand over his hair in an effort to smooth it.

She shakes her head with exasperation. “Simon, no one is going to judge you here. You look just fine” Cath answers reassuringly.

“Are you sure? I didn’t make the best of first impressions..” He replies, the pavilion growing nearer with each step.

“Well, you have all the time in the world to make up for it with your.. charming personality” She replies dryly, a smile behind her teasing words.

When they finally arrive, dozens of people ebb and flow across the small venue, their movements reminding him of fish. He gets lost for a moment, taking it all in as he tries to remember the last party he had attended.

“Hello? ARK to Simon?” Strasky remarks, and he’s startled out of his stupor.

The brunette laughs at his alarmed reaction. “It’s easy to be a space cadet out in space, am I right?” He adds, and Simon manages an awkward smile in response.

“C’mon, there’s some people I want you to meet!” He says, taking him by the shoulder. Looking back to see Cath waving at him, he accepts his fate at being thrust forward into a group of strangers.

“Simon, this here is, Robin Bass, field service technician. And that’s Raleigh Herber, Omicron dispatcher” Peter introduces, and Simon can’t help avert his eyes when he looks at the two of them.

“What did you do back in Toronto?” Robin asks, her soft voice finally at home with her dark eyes and straw-colored hair.

“I... I helped run a bookstore with my friends from college” He answers, feeling vastly inferior to the scientists surrounding him.

“What did you study in school?” Raleigh inquires, and that feeling solidifies into an anchor in his stomach when he answers with “Literature”.

“Maybe you oughta analyze some of the memoirs that people on the ARK have been writing” Strasky jokes, and Simon humors him with a smile.

“You know, I actually, uh, came across your drawing of the ARK, Robin. It... it was nice. I liked the bright colors” Simon interjects awkwardly, trying to contribute to the conversation.

There’s an uncomfortable pause in the conversation as his words hang in the air. “I’m glad you liked it. I hadn’t shown anyone it before I... Well, I imagine you know what happened to me” She replies, her gaze settling on the ground in front of her.

“What else did you see when you were down at Pathos? What happened to everyone?” Strasky asks, his face a mixture of curiosity and concern.

Shit.

“I.. I think I need a drink. I’ll, uh, be right back” Simon replies, brushing past the man as he tries to escape the tension in his chest.  Discovering a table filled with appetizers and beverages, he makes a beeline right for it. 

_ Calm down, you can’t keep panicking every time someone asks you about- _

“Hey, it’s Simon, right?” Someone asks as he tries to twist the cap off the first standard bottle of alcohol he could find. Looking up, he freezes.

It’s Sarah.

His mouth gapes open and he tries to say something,  _anything_.

“Simon.. are you crying?” She asks, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“You’re Sarah, a payload technician from Theta” He replies, the words falling out of his mouth as quickly as the tears had welled up in his eyes.

“You were guarding the ARK from the WAU when I met you at Tau. You had been there for months, and you were the only human I ever found..  alive ” Simon continues, his hands gripping the beer in his hands ever so tightly.

“And you asked.. you asked me to...” He can’t even finish the sentence as she stands there at a loss for words. The tears drip down his cheeks.

“Simon, what’s going on?” Catherine’s concerned voice startles him out of the storm in his mind, and he lifts his head to see her standing by his side. “Strasky told me he was worried about you”.

“All the things that happened on Pathos are just constantly replaying over and over again in my brain.. like a horrible movie that won’t end” Simon responds, wiping off the tears with his sleeve as he deposits the bottle back on the table.

Catherine tells Sarah to excuse the two of us, and she leads me to a quieter section of the pavilion.

“Everyone wants to know what happened after their scans, but... how do I tell these people that they’re all dead?” He continues, his voice dropping to a defeated whisper. 

His friend is silent for several moments, lost in thought, but then her face lights up with excitement.

“What if you didn’t have to tell them? Instead, what if you could show them?” She suggests, and Simon’s unable to understand her thought process.

“How?” He asks, and she’s eager to explain.

“Your scan captures everything that makes you, you. So maybe... I can retrieve the memories from your scan and present them in a viewable format!” Cath elaborates, and Simon doesn’t want to douse her enthusiasm with skepticism.

“Well, if you can get something like that to work, I won’t stop you. I want no part of this morbid movie night” He mutters, though he’s secretly grateful that the burden on his shoulders has been lifted.

“Quite unusual for the leading man to not make an appearance at his own film’s premiere, but I don’t think my coworkers will mind. They’re itching for something new” She retorts, making a small laugh.

“So.. you don’t mind having another Catherine here? How will you tell the difference?” He recalls, leaning against the wooden railing as he stares out into the park.

“Well, they already go by Rin and I’m fine with being called Cath” She states simply, and he feels self-conscious over how he handled his own copy back at Omicron.

“I’m sorry for getting angry with you so much... down on Earth” Simon says, his shoulders sagging with shame.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You took it all fairly well, considering the unusual circumstances” Cath replies, waving a hand in dismissal.

“Yeah, not many people wake up at the bottom of the ocean after a brain scan” He chuckles, and he felt a bit better. A little lighter.

The next morning, Simon woke up in his apartment to the sound of a phone ringing. He didn’t even realize there was one, but lo and behold, it sat perched on the nearby nightstand.

Initiating the connection, Cath’s voice blared through the receiver. “Morning, Simon! I figured it out! Took surprisingly less time than I thought to reverse engineer it... but it’ll still take until lunchtime to render” She confirmed excitedly, and he had to hold the phone away from his ear as she talked.

“Did... did you get any sleep last night?” He asks, rubbing the phosphenes from his eyes with the back of his free hand.

“Anyway, I was thinking of posting a bulletin on our online network, saying that I’ll set up a viewing” His friend ignores him completely as she continues talking, and he sighs with exasperation.

“That sounds fine. I.. I think I’ll just be fixing up my new room today. You said there’s a tablet that I can use to edit it’s layout?” Simon proposes, searching his barren room for the aforementioned device.

“Yes, it should be in your nightstand. I’ll leave you to it!” She confirms, and there’s a quiet beep as the call ends.

Fishing it out of the drawer near the top, he admires it’s sleek design. It didn’t look all that different from an iPad...

Turning it on, countless different options scream for his attention. He eventually manages to find the correct application for adjusting his room, and it displays a catalogue of decorations.

Without hesitation, he goes about making it resemble his old studio apartment. The furniture isn’t too difficult, but the smaller details are where it got tricky. 

They didn’t have virtual copies of the volumes in his book collection, though he managed to find plenty of sci-fi novels that he now no longer had the stomach for.

He also had to to personally recreate the artwork hanging on his walls himself, but he doesn’t mind. Sitting at his newly created kitchen table, the afternoon sunlight filtering in through the curtains, it’s relaxing.

It reminded him of how he wanted to get into photography. His mom had bought him a fancy Nikon for his 26th birthday, but the only photos he had taken were candid shots of his friends.

They were goofy at the time, but they had carried such emotion in them. The ones he had taken of Ashley became his favorite after she died. 

On a beach trip, Jesse had scared her with a sand crab while she was drinking some lemonade, and it cartoonishly squirted out of her nostrils. Simon managed to snag a picture as she chased Jesse with her sandals as a weapon of punishment.

The memory made him chuckle aloud, but his smile faltered as he remembered how he would never see the two of them again.

He shakes his head and tries to reassure himself. _ No, think positive, Simon. You can make friends here too. _

But even that line of positive thinking had it’s limits. What were they going to think after they saw his memories?

He could hardly talk with them currently, how would he be able to after they had seen what he’d witnessed? Why would anyone want to talk to the man who had seen their dead bodies and heard their final words? Their happy paradise would fragment.

Maybe they’d want him gone. An outcast from another time who didn’t belong. He shouldn’t even be on the ARK in the first place...

There’s a knock at the door, and he realizes that he had fallen asleep on the kitchen table. The sun had long since set, and the room was pitch black.

“I.. I’m coming!” He yells after there’s another knock, trying his best to navigate to the other side of the room.

When he opens the door, he has to wait a second for his eyes to adjust to the different brightness. And to his immense surprise, the hallway is filled with people. 

“What... what are you all doing here?” He says to the twenty or so individuals crowding the small space.

No one says anything, they all exchange quick but similarly concerned faces, so the creeping anxiety in his chest makes him assume the worst.

“Please... please don’t make me leave. I.. I don’t wanna die again” He states quickly, ducking his head in fear. Tears well up in his eyes.

“What? No! Simon, we’re not here to cast you out” He hears Cath shout, and lifts his head to see her move to the front of the congregation. Before he can say anything else, her arms wrap around him in a tight hug.

“We’re here to say that... we’re sorry for what you went through” She assures, and he’s too shocked to move.

“We all support you, Simon!” Sarah voices from further back in the crowd, a slight rasp to her tone.

A chorus of comments and affirmations rippled inwards as people moved in for a group hug. “Welcome to the ARK, Simon!” Robin yells. “Glad to have ya here” Strasky states, with Ross standing next to him mouthing a silent “I’m sorry”.

Simon reciprocates Cath’s hug, and for the first time since his awakening at Upsilon several days ago, he finally feels safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The movie showing was *definitely* a shitshow for various reasons but some of em managed to Chill Out long enough to go check on our poor boy Simon lol


End file.
